Hand trucks are well known devices used for the manual transportation of heavy loads from one location to another location. The most common hand truck has a generally L-shaped body with wheels at the vertex of the L-shaped body and at least one handle located either around a midpoint of the L-shape or near the top of the L-shape. The short leg of the L-shape is the load bearing portion of the hand truck, with the short let typically level with a support surface when the hand truck is upright. An object to be moved is tilted forward, the short leg is inserted underneath such object, the object is then allowed to tilt back and rest on the short leg. Then the hand truck, with supported object, is tilted backward until the center of gravity of the combination is generally balanced over the wheels, making otherwise bulky and heavy objects easier to move.
Improvements to such hand-propelled vehicles have been developed over the years. One improvement relates to providing powered lifting, lowering and transporting features. One example of such a prior art device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,530,740 issued to Kim on Mar. 11, 2003. Kim teaches a hand truck with an electrically operated lifting platform. While Kim is an improvement over the prior art hand-propelled vehicles, the Kim hand truck does not fully address several problems related to providing a powered hand truck device with powered features; some of which are discussed below. In addition, Kim provides no teachings related to associating an electronic module for providing automatic features to such the system (as described later).
Thus there is a current need for new handtrucks.